Schrodinger
by flyingwyvern
Summary: Like Schrodinger's cat, Light is caught between life and death. Having missed the Death Note, he is frustrated, bored...and then a man appears, strange and familiar, claiming an impossible story that intrigues the isolated genius. AU. Light & L.
1. Prologue

_This world…it's dead._

The pen drummed impatiently against his desk, tapping out an endless tattoo on the dull wood.

Everywhere you look…death, destruction…decay…

His textbook lay open on his desk, all but covered by the morning's printouts. The crime reports were his paltry form of entertainment—how many cases could he solve, how many riddles could he break, before his attention wore thin? It was such a pity that there were no truly brilliant criminals at large. Light Yagami had to content himself with the common criminals, but it won him the admiration of his father's peers nonetheless.

_Boredom._

Light's pen left off its drumming as he slid his fingers along the crisp sheets. Here was the murder of a common schoolteacher; there was the embezzling of thousands from a local business. A murder-suicide, a burglary, a recent gang fight; this morning's list was dull indeed. Where was the _point_? All of these criminals were so petty, so blind, and it wouldn't take the _real_ police long to catch them. Longer than it would take him, certainly, but he had some time to go before he could actually join the force.

_The world is crumbling around us, and no one _sees._ They're blind, all of them, cognizant of nothing but the two inches in front of their noses. The world should be an opportunity, a land of hopes and dreams and futures; instead, it's merely a smoldering cesspit filled with nothing but primitive squabbles and material concerns._

"_Dystopia" is supposed to be a fictional concept._

Light allowed himself a faint sigh before half-returning his attention to the droning of his teacher. Appearances had to be kept up, after all.

A flutter of black passed by the window—silent, but certainly out of the ordinary.

The odds of that flutter catching Light's eye at that moment were fifty-fifty: even odds. After all, Light Yagami was an alert young boy, but he wasn't paying particular attention to the dull world outside the window. We all know what happened next, of course—but do you know what _happens?_

Schrödinger's cat was locked up in a box with a fifty-fifty chance of dying. The thought-exercise demonstrated the bizarre nature of superposition: according to the laws of quantum physics, the cat was alive and dead at the same time—until the act of observation forced it into one state of being. At this moment in time, Light Yagami is, in essence, a prime example of the quantum measurement problem…

And here is where our story diverges.

When the bell rang, Light walked past the courtyard without so much as noticing the slim black notebook lying abandoned on the ground.

This story is quite different from the one familiar to us all. Unfortunately, Schrödinger's ludicrous demonstration of superposition was a mere thought-exercise. He never did figure out what happened to the other cat—the possibility that vanished from the box, so to speak. Was it the same cat, I wonder? Did it cease to exist?

Our story opens—for real, this time—two years later…

* * *

I cannot promise you frequent updates. I cannot promise you a story that makes sense.

What I can promise: that each and every review will thrill me, no matter how simple; that I will attend to this when I can; and that I'm going to try and Write Well. We'll see if it works. I've missed FFnet, I really have--life has been utterly crazy over this past year, and I'm so, so tired. But I love to write, and I'm breaking from original fic...with this.

Tell me what you think after the next chapter.

Fly, 11/20


	2. Codes

"Have you finished your work for the night?"

Light stared moodily into his coffee mug. "Yes, Mother."

His mother, as timid as always, bit her lip hesitantly. "Light…"

"Yes?"

"Are you feeling okay, dear? I do worry about you. You work as much as your poor father."

Light's dull grimace slipped off his face instantly. He met her concerned gaze and flashed his best smile. "Of course, Mother. I'm fine."

Her smile was less than perfect. "If you say so, Light."

Light Yagami finished his coffee and took the empty mug to the sink before making his way to his room. As soon as the door closed behind him, the smile slid off his face like water running off an oil-slicked raincoat. In its place, his calm, placid mask slipped over his features—a perfectly ordinary, commonplace expression, except for the slight downward tilt at the corners of his mouth.

_Discarding one falsehood for another_, Light thought wryly. _I don't even know what my normal expression looks like anymore._

His room, uninhabited except for the weekends when he returned home, was as impeccably neat as ever—bland, cool, and vaguely welcoming. Like a newly cleaned hotel room, it gave off the beige air of pseudo-vitality. The main centerpiece was his desk, naturally—perfectly spotless, gleaming with the orange scent of wood polish, just another abandoned prop in the play of his life.

All the world's a stage…

Light wondered if Shakespeare was a cynic.

Getting accepted into college had been simple. From the first practice exam, his nationwide dominance had been easily established. It had left him feeling…disappointed, almost, even if it was just another verification of a well-known fact. He still took out his textbooks from time to time, if only to keep up the act, but education was no longer a challenge.

Actually, very little was.

Light clicked on the print icon and folded his hands behind his head as the papers slowly spooled in the printer. No research, an hour of typing, and the resulting paper was undoubtedly more than good enough for his professor's standards.

He saved his work to his thumb drive, closed the program, and picked up the papers when the printer finally finished spitting them out. The stapler bit into his essay easily, clamping down on all fifteen sheets, and then he was done. He had no homework, a long weekend, all the time in the world—and absolutely nothing to do.

The librarian's student-assistant knew him well enough by now, and as usual, her face clamped down into a carefully vacant expression as she took his ID card. "Ah," she said, "Light Yagami. Done already?"

"Yes, thank you," Light said, feeling his face contort into its customary smile. "I find Professor Nakamura's class to be on the simpler side, so I didn't need the computer for that long."

"A father like yours, and you still use the school computers," she said, keeping her tone jesting. Her eyes flashed in a way that made Light feel decidedly unsettled. "Don't you have your own?"

"I'm sorry, Takada," he said coolly, dropping his pretense of the angelic schoolboy by an inch. "I don't consider myself above using campus facilities."

Takada smiled at him, but it was no less false than his own charming mask. "Oh, I'm sorry if I've offended you," she said earnestly. Her gaze flicked to the computer. "You've been cleared." She handed him his ID card back, still smiling prettily, and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "Have a good weekend, Yagami-san."

"And you as well, Kiyomi-san," he said, just as cheerfully courteous, reverting to her surname in recognition of her own return to formality. Takada's smile twisted, but if she found something humorous, she didn't care to share it. She waved at him on his way out.

Light closed the library doors behind him and surveyed the campus that spilled out along the hills. It was flawless, sculpted to perfection, organized in rolling green lawns and flowering cherry trees, all clipped to carefully measured guidelines. On the paved pathways, students strolled, laughing, mouths jerking and hands gesticulating in a predetermined dance of social mimicry.

Light's carefully tranquil smile mellowed still farther, deftly eradicating any instinctive sneer that dared to try and emerge.

He started down one of the pathways, clutching his paper in one hand and the lapels of his jacket in the other. It was spring, supposedly, but from the crisp breeze in the air one could easily have mistaken it for otherwise. It would be a long walk back to his dorm.

After scaling the steps and threading his way past chattering students, Light slipped into his room and turned the deadbolt. It was probably a meaningless exercise—after all, no one had reason to barge into his room, unless they were moronic enough to think that he would offer them _help_. He didn't have any good acquaintances on campus. Light kept himself warm, but distant; amiable, but fleeting. He was always busy, always flitting from one group to another, touching on everyone and striking up small talk to maintain his appearance as a kind, self-assured student while preventing anything resembling a friendship from developing. It did wonders for his sanity. Maintaining a friendship was far too time-consuming, and besides—no human being could offer him anything he didn't already have.

He opened the drawer in his desk and slipped the paper inside, intending to proofread it later, if only for lack of a better waste of time. He knew instinctively that his errors would be insignificant, if there were any at all, but he needed a time-consuming excuse to skip out on the typically juvenile weekend festivities that his peers would undoubtedly have planned. Nakamura was known for assigning lengthy, menial work, even if his class was depressingly dull.

Light closed the drawer and paused, eyes shifting to the door as his ears registered a peculiar sound. Footsteps…

Not that it was an unusual sound, of course; Light _did_ live in a college dorm, and footsteps were by far the least bothersome sounds. That did nothing to cancel out the fact, however, that his dorm was the last one on the hall—and besides, these footsteps were…soft, cautious, completely uncharacteristic of the other residents. They were nearly inaudible, but from what he could hear, they were measured and careful, and that in itself provoked his curiosity.

And then, of course, it crossed Light's mind to wonder why he was being distracted by something as commonplace as a set of footsteps. His breath hissed out in faint irritation as he realized exactly how low he had fallen. He needed to find something to occupy his mind…

The footsteps stopped, and there was a rustle by his door.

Light spun around and stared as a slip of paper was silently inserted through the crack between the door and the carpet. Then, the footsteps started up again, this time heading _away_ from his room, and Light was left feeling distinctly bemused.

He crossed the room and picked it up slowly, cautiously. Upon unfolding it, Light was presented with complete and utter nonsense: a mess of jumbled English letters, separated into five-character blocks with bland precision.

_Gibberish. How…lovely._

Light thrust the deadbolt aside and yanked his door open—only to be presented with an empty hallway. Well, then.

Who the hell thrust random pieces of paper underneath dorm room doors?

Light strode over to his desk and dropped it in his wastebasket. _Time-wasting gibberish_. He didn't have _time_ for idiotic, nonsensical pranks.

_On the contrary_, a voice in his mind piped cheerfully. _You've got all the time in the world, and nothing to do with it._

Light groaned. He collapsed onto his bed and stared at the ceiling for precisely twenty-one point oh four seconds before rolling back onto his feet.

There had to be something productive he could be doing in his spare time.

oXAXo

Unfortunately, decent entertainment was in short supply.

It was spring break, so it wasn't as if he could stay in his dorm all weekend—that would immediately invite questions, and probably invitations, too. So, for lack of a better occupation, Light Yagami left campus with his bookbag slung over his shoulder and headed for the bus.

He disembarked at his usual stop and made his way slowly through the streets. Here, in a mostly residential corner of the city, life was somewhat less hectic, and he was just another casual pedestrian in a crowd of commuters.

The bookstore he finally entered was a small one, crowded with ceiling-height shelves that burst with paper-bound locution. Inside, it smelled faintly of coffee; the café in the corner was open, churning out waves of warmth to counteract the cool air outside. None too surprisingly, it was almost empty; other than the sole employee, a man who was engrossed in his tea was the only customer. He had his back to Light, and Light prayed that it would remain that way. He wasn't in the mood for idle chatter.

He smiled and nodded to the woman behind the counter, and she returned it with her own round-cheeked grin. "Yagami Light," she said. "I wasn't expecting you this weekend. It's spring break, isn't it?"

Light shrugged. "No sense in breaking a routine."

Mizuki chuckled and pulled a paper cup from the rack. "Your mother must be proud, having such a diligent son," she commented. "Your usual?"

"Yes, please."

He had been coming to the bookstore for some time now. He'd discovered it by accident, on one of his meandering walks through the city. It was a small place—crushed between two towering apartment buildings on the side and topped by yet more condos—but, more importantly, it was almost always open, and it had been one of the few glowing windows when a thunderstorm had caught him off-guard last semester. Since then, Light had taken to visiting on a regular basis—first for the coffee, then for the books, and, finally, for the solitude. It was a rare commodity. Mizuki was good company. She kept to herself, read her books, brewed coffee, and occasionally prattled about her sons, doctors both, which was a crime of pride that Light could forgive.

Mizuki handed him the cup, steaming with the dark aroma of pure, unsullied coffee, and paused. "Oh—and Light?"

"Yes?"

"I have—a letter for you." Mizuki looked uncertain. She reached under the counter and handed it to him: clean, pristine, an unassuming envelope. "It was here in the morning, when I came in," she said. "I swear it wasn't here last night, and I was the one who opened, so…"

"You don't know who left it?"

Mizuki shook her head and tucked a wisp of fading hair behind her ear. "I don't know," she admitted. "But it has your name on it, so I figured it couldn't hurt. Do you know who would leave it here?"

"I don't, actually. It's strange." Light shook his head and flashed her a grateful smile. "Thank you, Mizuki."

"Never a problem, Light," she said, and then paused, looking at him expectantly. Light blinked, then remembered.

"Oh," he said, reaching for his wallet. "Sorry. Give me a moment, let me find my card—"

When Light made it to his normal table by the window, the coffee was still smoldering between his hands. He inhaled carefully, feeling the wisps of rich smoke rise past his lips in unfurling spirals of warmth. Coffee, he decided, was one of the few things that he enjoyed.

He studied the envelope with a small amount of trepidation. First that damned piece of paper under his door, and now this…

The kanji on the cover was crisp and clear, penned by someone with a seriously obsessive nature. And who would bother sending him a letter not by ordinary post, but by leaving it in a _bookshop_? None of his "friends" at school even knew that he came here.

Light sighed and slit the thin strip of adhesive with one careful fingernail, frowning as part of the paper caught and ripped. Upon opening, a trifolded piece of paper peeked out, meek and pale as its quiet encasing. Light removed it impatiently and unfolded it, only to be presented with…

More bloody _letters_.

Block after block of English characters, strung together to form gibberish…but obviously, there was more to it than that. A code. A cipher.

Light had dealt with rudimentary cryptology before, and he was no fool. Someone was sending him encrypted letters. He set the paper aside and returned to his coffee. The warmth radiated through his hands, and he closed his eyes.

His lips curved upward.

Finally, finally—a puzzle to play with.

He just hoped that it would last.


	3. Encryption

**AN: **Looks like I'm continuing this after all! More to come shortly. I'm also considering reviving Binary Helix. Please do leave me reviews; even if I haven't managed to get back to you, I appreciate every one. And for those of you who haven't read my other stories, I am very much against yaoi in the DN universe. It just has no canonical basis.

More exciting things are coming in the future, I promise. :)

1/25/2010, 3:57 PM

* * *

The letters were mocking him.

He'd had to hunt for a pencil. Light was used to using pens—when did he ever make mistakes?—but he'd suspected that this would be a matter of trial and error.

He'd been right.

Light took a sip of his coffee and frowned. It was his third cup today, and it was already lukewarm. The code was taking longer than he'd expected. He'd already checked for a simple Caesar Shift—an alphabet shift, where each letter was shifted a set number of places—but that clearly wasn't the case. Now, he was trying a Vigenère.

The Vigenère cipher was a permutation of the Caesar Shift, where a repeating keyword was used instead of just shifting the letters by a set interval. The Vigenère was easily breakable as well; if he had a computer, he could have done it in a few minutes. Light was, however, determined to make this puzzle last.

He chewed his lip and ran his finger along the lines of text. The letters were mocking him.

The first letters might have been his name, he reasoned. If he followed that assumption, it wasn't too much of a leap to surmise that—

"Light?"

Light looked up, annoyance creasing his face. Mizuki was leaning against the counter; the other patron had apparently disappeared while he'd been absorbed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wanted to make sure you were all right. I know that you usually leave by this hour."

He checked his watch. Ten-thirty. Not obscenely late, but…when had he arrived? Four?

"Oh," he said. A wave of irritation rose in his throat. Irritation at what? At the disturbance, or at losing track of time? "Thank you Mizuki. I'll be going."

He stared at the code while the bus rolled and lurched across the uneven pavement. Maybe he would punch it into his laptop when he got home.

No. That would be cheating. This had to last.

With a sigh, Light scratched out yet another attempt and started over.

oXAXo

Nobody noticed his arrival at the dorms. Light bolted for his room, eager despite himself. This was a new kind of frustration. Frustration with a purpose, a goal—it was different. Unexpected.

He remembered his first taste of this kind of frustration, years ago. He'd been working with math printouts when he had come across something he hadn't understood: an _x_, thrown into the midst of all the numbers.

The concept of algebraic variables had clicked as soon as his father, chuckling, explained it to him, but anger had flared in his chest. He was Light Yagami. He shouldn't need help!

He'd been four years old at the time.

Each time he encountered an obstacle, the same sense of frustration surged in his blood. Taming it, forcing the anger into usable energy, was the key. Light thrived on frustration; it was so, so much better than the grayness of boredom.

Boredom was, he supposed, the absence of frustration. Boredom was the paralysis of too many possibilities and too little, at the same time. And that…that was what he'd been mired in.

He blinked at the past tense. But it was true—he wasn't bored. Not now. Not with this delicious puzzle. The twist of English made it more difficult than he'd expected; all of his cryptography courses had been in Japanese.

He found the crumpled piece of paper from earlier and smoothed it out. Perhaps they were related? No, no, of course they were. Of course. Whoever had left the cipher at the bookstore clearly knew his habits well; this was an elaborate trick.

This one was shorter, only a few lines long. Light ran through the possibilities, starting once again at the Caesar shift.

"No…no…no…"

And then the letters arranged themselves. T-H-E-K-E-Y-W-O-R-D-I-S…

"Apples?" Light read aloud, incredulous despite himself.

That was…ridiculous and frivolous and loaded with potential metaphors and clichés. With a shrug, he tried it as a keyword for the Vigenère.

It worked. Light felt disappointment stirring in his stomach; what, so was this a textbook sequence of common codes? He sorted out the letters, adding in punctuation and spacing, until the second piece of paper read:

_Light Yagami:_

_I would preface this letter with the typical "dear;" however, I am uncertain if that would be appropriate, given our previous relationship, which did not end on the best of terms._

_Forgive me. You see, I am very well acquainted with you, Light, though in this particular instance you likely do not know me. I have a proposal for you, Light. At the very least, I can promise a stimulating conversation. Once you have deciphered this, please come to the address listed below. Time is irrelevant; haste is a priority, as I will not be in the area for long._

_Sincerely,_

_Ryuzaki_

An address followed. Light recognized it almost immediately; it was one of the upper-scale hotels downtown. Intriguing.

There was something convoluted and undeniably strange about the message. First, why the game of the ciphers? And secondly—how could this Ryuzaki be "well acquainted" with him—how could they have had a "previous relationship"—when Light had never heard of the man? Obviously, the man had meant to contact _him_, so they were connected in some way. But how?

It was almost creepy, the way he'd known where Light lived, what coffee shop he frequented, but Light couldn't bring himself to worry about that. More intriguing was the simple fact that this was a _game_. It almost made up for the disappointing simplicity of the cipher.

Light glanced at the clock. It was only eleven forty-three. He felt more awake than he had in long, long time. Nobody would notice his absence.

Light was the epitome of a social butterfly: fluttering from group to group, uttering a word here and flashing a smile there. But he had no loyalties to the dull-witted plants of the collegiate garden, and his presence was never more than feather-light. It made him well-liked, and gave him the invisibility he needed.

Light opened his closet. If he didn't want to look out of place, he'd need some dress clothes.

oXAXo

The hotel lobby was exactly as he had expected: lush and soft, full of rich red furniture and gilded accents. The ostentatious display was grating, but at least he could act at ease here.

Light slipped on his customary mask—half-smile, mild intensity, complemented by a barely-interested gaze—and made his way to one of the chairs. He sat, legs crossed over each other, a paperback copy of _Hamlet _held open in his hand. He didn't read, instead opting to scan the room.

There were the usual suspects. The hotel desk attendant's uniform was burgundy, with gold trim; he looked tired. Light ruled him out immediately; there was no intelligence shimmering behind his eyes. A few businessmen were chatting wearily, their half-bald heads glistening under the lights. A mother with a pearl choker clasped the hand of a four-year-old. A few solitary men in their twenties and thirties were scattered through the lobby on their laptops, and a younger couple was drinking coffee in the corner.

None of them looked particularly intelligent, though he supposed that some of the solitary men could be the mysterious "Ryuzaki." Light chewed his lip.

Maybe he'd be better off waiting.

oXAXo

L Lawliet, known to this new world as Ryuzaki, was crouched in front of his laptop

He had rigged his own cameras in the hotel lobby. He smirked as he saw Light walk in, all slippery nonchalance and faked indifference. The image on the screen was blurred and jagged—his fault, for using cheap equipment—but the walk, the smirk, those were unmistakably Light's.

"_Light_," he whispered, and shivered. He wondered if this was a good idea.

Not that he had much of a choice. L had to be careful, and he had to be fast; his time here was limited. With a sigh, he closed the lid of his laptop and reached for the bowl of sugar cubes he kept by his side. Pure sugar was crude, but he needed his mind at peak awareness.

He only had one shot at this.

oXAXo

"Light Yagami."

The voice was mechanical, flat, spoken in near-perfect Japanese but with the smallest hint of an inflection that he didn't recognize. Light looked up from his book and frowned.

The man looked like he'd spent the last month on the street. His jeans were ripped and stained; he wore a nondescript white shirt that was at least three sizes too big. The clothes, however, weren't what made him look out of place. His hair was an unruly mess of black string, and his eyes were underlined with deep bags. The way he stood made Light immediately suspect him of being chair-bound; here was a man whose closest friend was probably his laptop.

If he could afford one, that was.

Light hadn't seen him in the lobby earlier, so he must have entered recently—from the elevators, probably, since those were out of his line of sight. Light's eyes narrowed. He couldn't afford proper clothing, but he could stay in this posh hotel?

"So I am," he said in acknowledgement. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, though; I don't know _your_ name."

The man slipped his thumb into his mouth and smirked. "I think you do," he said. "My name is Ryuzaki." The smirk had a crooked tilt to it, as if he was sharing a joke with someone who wasn't here.

He didn't offer a hand to Light, instead turning on his heel and calling over his shoulder, "Follow me."

Light allowed himself his own thin smile. This _Ryuzaki—_if that was his real name—was just as strange as he had suspected.

Perhaps spring break wouldn't be so bad after all.


End file.
